It is only ground breaking and trend setting if other people follow it. No one did, hence not ground breaking or trending.

bgalbrecht: I get that it worked for you and others and you bought the Nook for it but it did not lead to the sale of books for BN. So they sold a device but did not get follow on business and it is the follow on business that makes them money. So they made some people happy who were not going to spend money at their store. How did that help them?

In the end, though, the Kindles beat the Nook fairly soundly. I'm guessing that Amazon's reputation and ecosystem and marketing was what put them over. That and the fact that the Nooks that followed the Nook Color were fairly underwhelming hardware-wise.

Amazon launched the appstore first, got it established, and then launched the hardware. When Fire came out it already had far more available apps than the Nook appstore ever mustered and a lot of Android phone owners were already vested in the Amazon appstore.

Amazon acted like a content vendor, B&N as a hardware vendor.
(And not a terribly competent one.)

bgalbrecht: I get that it worked for you and others and you bought the Nook for it but it did not lead to the sale of books for BN. So they sold a device but did not get follow on business and it is the follow on business that makes them money. So they made some people happy who were not going to spend money at their store. How did that help them?

The devices are not making them money, the sale of the books are.

I understand that. What I'm saying is that while the people who bought the nook because of the sd card reader may not buy as many ebooks from them as someone who doesn't use the sd card reader, we wouldn't be buying any ebooks from them at all because of their DRM that prevents us from reading their books on our readers. I've bought hundreds of books from them (albeit mostly daily deals) that I would never have bought if they hadn't included the sd card readers and I had bought Sony or Kobo instead.

Amazon launched the appstore first, got it established, and then launched the hardware. When Fire came out it already had far more available apps than the Nook appstore ever mustered and a lot of Android phone owners were already vested in the Amazon appstore.

Amazon acted like a content vendor, B&N as a hardware vendor.
(And not a terribly competent one.)

Amazon also promoted their appstore heavily with the free app of the day so it had a huge following and a large number of apps before they had the hardware.

Amazon launched the appstore first, got it established, and then launched the hardware. When Fire came out it already had far more available apps than the Nook appstore ever mustered and a lot of Android phone owners were already vested in the Amazon appstore.

Amazon acted like a content vendor, B&N as a hardware vendor.
(And not a terribly competent one.)

I also saw a whole lot more Kindle Fire ads on TV than I ever saw for the Nook.

Honestly, if someone were to ask me what a "Nook Color" is, at this point I would describe it as "equivalent to the Kindle Fire," because they probably know what that is.

I also saw a whole lot more Kindle Fire ads on TV than I ever saw for the Nook.

That's the thing with Amazon and their almost-monopoly. They have the money to "buy" continued success: constant freebies, below-cost offers, ads, commercials, partnerships, buying out sites, taking over local or national stores, and so forth. A company has to try very hard to be unsuccessful (like Sony) once a certain market share and revenue flow is achieved.

I'm not saying that various of Amazon's competitors are blessed with an abundance of economical cleverness (look at Kobo's store interface, for example), and there is a lot of mismanagement, but it's much easier to remain successful if you have the funds, an established customer base, and wiggle room for mistakes and failures. And above all, you have more time once you're in a dominant position, which also allows for experiments and innovation.